Damn, they’re not ambitious, are they? $250K gets us an 8-level expansion, $500K gets multiplayer and a new engine, $750K gets a level editor and cross-platform support (Mac & Linux), $1M gets us the full-on, full-fledged Defense Grid 2 game, with new aliens towers game modes campaign and OMGSPOOOOOGE
($250K is their base goal, the rest are stretch.)
Hell, if a stinkin’ old-school boardgame (Ogre) could almost crack $1M without even planning to, who’s to say how far this could go? I’m in at $50, which gives beta access to all new content via Steam. Come on, you KNOW you want this!!!
I know someone who would sacrifice as many people/cattle/whatever as needed to get multiplayer Defense Grid, but I’m not sure he’d actually put any more than about $20 down on it. I think that’s going to be their biggest obstacle, as I’m not inclined to put down much of anything unless I know that $1M mark is going to be hit. Doesn’t look like I’m alone in that, either.
$1M seems like a lot of money for a game of this genre, particularly when they’ve obviously worked out the basics already. Of course, $250k seems like an egregiously larger amount of money for only 8 levels. Am I just totally out of touch with how much effort a tower defense is to make?
Well, they are talking about creating a “new engine” for the sequel, whatever they mean by that, exactly. And it sounds like they are actually wanting to fund their development with the Kickstarter, which is not the intention of most of the games Kickstarters. Based on the other games numbers I’ve seen (and the amazing level of polish Defense Grid had at launch), that doesn’t sound unreasonable to me.
Loved Defense Grid to death, hopefully they can get towards the new game. I’ve probably played enough of the original and expansions and even a new engine with multiplayer couldn’t draw me back in.
Really weird setup they’ve got here. I loved DG, but I don’t have a burning need for another handful of levels. DG2 would on the other hand be a day one purchase at $50 for me. So the Kickstarter pseudo-pre-order affect isn’t going to hook me if I’m going to overpay for a level pack that I don’t want or alternately underpay for a game that I’m happy to buy at full price if it comes out. I’ll wait this out until I see if they get close to the $1M goal.
I hope that having the full game be the stretch goal doesn’t become the norm for Kickstarter projects.
$1 million would be lucky to fund a studio for a year with 10 people working decent wages, after wages, benefits, costs of doing business, rewards, and of course the cut that both Kickstarter and Amazon take out of the total.
Why do they need a Kickstarter? They are pretty much on Valve’s payroll now as CSGO developers. Defense Grid was very successful on Steam too. I have no doubt Valve would finance the sequel.
If we had the money to make DG2 on our own, we would absolutely do it. There’s a lot that goes into a game business, and while Valve and us are partners on CSGO, it doesn’t extend at the moment to financing our own projects.
WARNING: LOTS OF SKEPTICISM AHEAD.
I have the first one, and it’s a fantastic game (it and Killing Floor were the reasons I created my Steam account). I also agree that TD is a niche genre and isn’t very popular, but the first game has done incredibly well for an indie game:
[ul]
[li]Top 10 sale every time it’s on sale (except during big sale, for obvious reason)
[/li]> [li]Very few sale (on the top of my head, I can count about 5, and that’s included the latest 3 Steam-wise sale).
[/li]> [li]Game is generally accepted to be top-notch (maybe a little biased, but wherever I goes, DG and Sol Suvivor are synonymous to TD.
[/li]> [/ul]
Now they’re saying they need 1 mil? Hmm, I don’t know, how about throw in another Steam sale, see how much they got first? Apparently they doesn’t need money that badly, since the lowest tier reward gives you DG1. Also apart from DG1, I don’t know any other game from Hidden Path, and working with Valve in CS:GO? Excuse my bluntness, but so does Valve’s employees’ favorite grocery stores.
f you have any specific questions, I’ll try to answer them.
Real answer: takes a lot of money to make games (especially ones with 3d art instead of 2d sprites), and we don’t have enough to make DG2 on our own. We’ve been pitching it for several years but it’s not f2p social (where the money is now in small games), or AAA (where the money is in big games). We still think there’s enough interest to be successful, but that’s what we’re finding out by doing a kickstarter. Because kickstarters have been oversaturated, we wanted to change it up a little by finding partners (AMD, Razer) who could help us with getting the word out.
(and we’ve doing primary development on CS:GO for 3 years now, but that’s a different question :))
What happened to the profits the original made?
We were in a situation before with some investment that let us borrow money for DG, then pay back with its profits. Unfortunately we aren’t in that situation any more, and the profits aren’t enough to cover DG2 (we’ve reinvested heavily already though)
I was thinking about jumping on the Early Bird special but it’s sold out (only 500 copies seriously?). Way to reward people on Kickstarter.
Well in this case I will wait for the expansion / Defense Grid 2 on Steam.
If the piss me off more than I will wait for a sale on them. It’s not as if my backlog let me run out of games in the next years anyways.
From what I remember of DG1… well, it looked very nice, but the nature of this games means they can heavily reuse art assets for the scenarios, the maps themselves are very simple to do once you have the editor and the gameplay nailed down (and they have, they can reuse the code of the first game), and yeah, being honest, I think one million dollars is an inflated number for this project (and also 250K is expensive for just 8 new levels for the first game).
I’d back it if it the goal was 1 million. I also think they’d stand a much better chance of reaching a million, if that was the goal. As it is, a lot of people seem to be holding back, waiting for it to reach a million.
Who approves this shit on Kickstarter? This is not a Kickstarter for DG2, it’s a Kickstarter for a DG1 expansion. ie successfully funding this project (250k) does not get you the DG2 advertised in the project title. It’s blatantly misleading.
I mean, good luck to them and all, but at least be honest about it and ask for the million.
